Conventionally, there is an image sensing apparatus having an image sensing mode and a reproduction mode as operating modes in which a zoom function in the image sensing mode and an enlarged image reproduction/magnification change in the reproduction mode have been assigned to the same control member. Specifically, in the reproduction mode, when a zoom control member is set to a telephoto side, a magnification of a display image is increased, and when the zoom control member is set to a wide-angle side, the magnification of the display image is decreased. In this manner, a user can perform a reproduction image enlargement designation operation with the same sensation as when performing a zoom operation during image sensing, and for this reason amounts to an instinctively easy-to-understand user interface.
Additionally, a multi-image reproduction function has been proposed that can display a plurality of reduced images on a single display screen and select the image that the user wishes to display in the full screen size when the zoom control member is moved to the wide-angle side (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-308490).
A speedy response to user operations is required of the zoom operation in the image sensing mode, as is the ability to precisely adjust the position of the zoom and to respond sensitively to user operations. At the same time, however, because the zoom responds with the same speed as the zoom operation in the image sensing mode if the zoom control member is touched inadvertently during image reproduction in the reproduction mode, a display operation that is unsatisfactory to the user is executed. Accordingly, a first drawback of the conventional art arises if the zoom operation in the reproduction mode is performed with the same sensitive response as the zoom operation in the image sensing mode, in that a user interface in the reproduction mode that is satisfactory to the user cannot be provided.
Moreover, when performing multi-image reproduction in the reproduction mode, processing time increases because a plurality of recorded images are scanned from a storage medium and displayed. Therefore, a second drawback arises if the zoom control member is touched inadvertently, in that the apparatus becomes unable to accept user operations while performing the multi-image reproduction.
Further, a third drawback arises in that, when a zoom ring is used as the zoom control member, users often mistakenly rotate the zoom ring in the wrong direction, with the result that, if the zoom ring is mistakenly rotated in the wide-angle direction during full screen size image display, or if the zoom ring is mistakenly rotated by a great amount in the wide-angle direction during magnified display, the apparatus shifts to the multi-image reproduction process against the wishes of the user and the user must then wait for the process to be completed.